Xpose issue 43 2/7/00: Victoria Pratt, on Xena.samcabrera.net
2525 Vision (Xposé issue 43)
interview by Steven Eramo.
Starring as Sarge in Cleopatra 2525 Victoria Pratt is keen to bring a likeable toughness to the role. Steven Eramo challenged her to an arm wrestling contest. And lost.
ZAGER AND Evans, way back in 1969, wrote a song called In The Year 2525 that foretells a bleak future for humankind.
Set in the same year as the song's opening lyrics, the new action-adventure series Cleopatra 2525 suggests the same thing. Monstrous creatures known as the Bailies rule the surface of the Earth and humans have been driven underground in order to survive.
Sadly, most of humanity has abandoned any hope of ever reclaiming the surface, but there are some courageous individuals who will never stop trying to do so. One of them is Sarge, a spirited, no-nonsense, fearless resistance fighter who teams up with two other strong and beautiful warriors, Hel and Cleopatra, to kick some Bailey ass! While Sarge could easily give Rambo and the Terminator a run for their money, Canadian actress Victoria Pratt wants her character to be more than just an unemotional demolition machine with a one-track mind.
"When you're playing a really tough female character the danger exists to make her very one-note and the last thing in the world I wanted Sarge to be was a meathead," laughs Pratt. "I mean, you'll watch some actresses in similar roles and all they bring to their performance is physical strength and/ or just meanness. I want there to be a few different levels to Sarge. She can be lusty, angry, funny and so much more, and I didn't want to sacrifice a thing when making her tough as nails. Certainly the biggest challenge, though, is keeping her a bit vulnerable and sensitive, but only a little bit."
"Sarge's personality is also very much dictated by her past. She saw her whole world ripped apart when she was a kid and escaped into this subterranean realm she knew nothing of and did whatever she had to do to get by. Then when she hooked up with Hel [Gina Torres], this gave her a reason for staying alive and the idea that,
'Yeah, we can fight the Bailies. We can take back the surface.' So I think Sarge reallv respects Hal for helping her turn her life around. They have a special relationship, much like sisters, and, because they're fighting for the same cause, constantly depend on one another to save each other's hides."
In 1998, Pratt guest-starred as Cyane, Queen of the Amazons, in the two-part Xena: Warrior Princess episode Adventures in the Sin Trade. The actress's performance impressed series executive producer Robert Tapert so much that he wrote the part of Sarge in Cleopatra 2525 for her.
"Cyane is forced to wander the Land of the Dead after Xena [Lucy Lawless] kills her and her fellow Amazons, so needless to say she's pretty bitter," notes the actress. "This was the first time I ever had to play a character that felt no joy or happiness, and it's probably the one I enjoyed the least only because it was the farthest from my true personality. I'm a bit of a nut. My first reaction to most things is laughter, but there was none of that with Cyane. She couldn't even feel despair because there was no chance of things getting better, you know?
There was nothing left in her soul and it was a challenge to play that. Rob told me that he liked Cyane's strength and the physicality I brought to the role and it was because of this that he developed the character of Sarge with me in mind, which I thought was very nice of him."
Ironically, when Pratt was initially offered the part of Sarge she had to turn it down because of a prior commitment to a feature film project. As fate would have it, however, funding fell through a few days before principal photography was due to begin on the movie. "So I called my agent in Los Angeles and asked, 'Have they begun casting yet for Sarge?' They hadn't and I got the part. So I'm really fortunate that things turned out the way they did."
Two days later, the actress was on a plane for New Zealand to begin work on Cleopatra 2525. She recalls with great amusement the very first scene she and co-star Gina Torres filmed for the episode Home. "Gina and I arrived on the set in our costumes all ready to go.
The director was setting up the action for us and explained to us, 'A Betrayer robot is going to walk into the room and you shoot him.' Gina and I looked at each other puzzled and then at him and said,
'OK, we shoot him... but with what?' Our stunt co-ordinator Peter Bell, who can make anything look cool, pointed to the gauntlets on our arms and said, 'Just use your arm like a cannon.' If only you could have seen us trying to pretend that laser blasts were coming out of these things. It was pretty funny.
"Of course, then we got good at it. In fact, too good, " chuckles Pratt. "In the next scene our instructions were, 'A big swarm of mutants is attacking from atop this ledge and you've got to take them out! Action!' So Gina and I fired away - barn, barn, barn! The next day, our co-executive producer Erig [Cruendemann] looked at the rushes and then had all the laser effects put in. That afternoon, he told us, 'Just so you know, those laser blasts cost a thousand dollars a pop.' We ended up going thousands of dollars over-budget on the very first day! Gina and I said, 'jeez, we're sorry, 'but we had no idea, you know? Now we make sure to aim at the enemy," she laughs. "The first few weeks of filming were a big learning curve and,thank God, everyone was very patient and supportive."
Hel and Sarge meet up with Cleopatra (Jennifer Sky) in the show's pilot episode Quest for Firepower. When Sarge is injured in an attack by a Betrayer robot, Hel must find her another kidney. They visit a reliable but shifty dealer of body parts who has just acquired a supply of cryogenically frozen humans from the 20th Century, including Cleopatra. Hel finds a suitable donor for Sarge and programs the computer to perform the operation. Sarge barely has time to recover from the surgery when the Betrayer robot bursts into the room. Much to Sarge's dismay, Hel decides to take the now-revived Cleopatra with them as they make their escape from the Betrayer.
"Sarge's relationship with Cleo is slightly strained," says the actress. "At first, Sarge finds Cleopatra a hindrance. It's hard enough trying to stay alive without having to worry about looking after this strange woman. She gets in the way, doesn't know her way around the underground and, in essence, is a danger to their cause. Hel, however, sees Cleopatra as a link to the past and thinks she can help them defeat the Bailies, so to keep the peace she sometimes has to act as mediator between her and Sarge. As the series goes on, Sarge does share a few close moments with Cleopatra and the two finally begin to bond. I think their growing friendship as well as the dynamic between the three women helps keep things interesting."
Helping our trio of heroines develop weapons to use in their fight against the Bailies is Mauser (Patrick Kake), a handsome android that is fully functional in every way except one.
"He's not programmed for sex," says Pratt. "So it kind of becomes Hel's mission, but definitely Sarge's, to see if they can get a response out of Mauser, if you know what I mean. Because we know it's in all probability impossible, it makes it all the more fun to try. Patrick is so adorable and good-natured about the whole thing. We're constantly teasing him on the set and he gets a kick out of it."
The very nature of Cleopatra 2525 as a series requires all three of its stars to do a number of physical stunts. In Quest for Firepower alone, Pratt has to run, roll, do backwards flips and lie across the tops of three moving barrels while 'firing' laser blasts from her gauntlets. Fortunately, the actress has trained as an athlete from the time she was a youngster and is a blue belt in Shotokan karate, both of which come in handy when doing such scenes.
"When I first saw that barrel stunt in the script I thought, 'I'll never be able to do that in a million years.' Then I watched one of the stunt people run, jump stomach-down on the barrels and just go along for the ride. I thought, 'That's not too hard.' So I took it slow the first time and then did one full out for the cameras.
Most of the time it's just getting over that initial fear. Once you have it in your head that you can do something, then you usually can. I try to approach my stunts as if I were a kid because I'm not doing anything that I didn't do and love when I was a child.
"Keep in mind, too, that as Sarge I do a lot of things on television that most women don't. I bare my teeth, I grunt, I get into it. I realise that I may not look the prettiest when I'm doing my action stuff but I think it's more convincing. My feeling is I can sacrifice the glamour shots because in the long run it's going to look better if I just go for it, so that's what I do," says the actress.
Pratt's enthusiasm for Cleopatra 2525 is obvious and she plans to do all she can to help it succeed. "With this show we've been given the opportunity to do something really unique and we're really, hoping it'll catch on."
© Visimag's Xpose
Return to The Mutant X Warehouse